One important aim in the development of power semiconductor devices, such as power transistors or power diodes, is to produce devices with a high voltage blocking capability but, nevertheless, a low on-resistance (RON), and with low switching losses.
Power transistors usually include a drift region arranged between a body region and a drain region and doped lower than the drain region. The on-resistance of a conventional power transistor is dependent on the length of the drift region in a current flow direction and on the doping concentration of the drift region, wherein the on-resistance decreases when the length of the drift region is reduced or when the doping concentration in the drift region is increased. However, reducing the length of the region or increasing the doping concentration reduces the voltage blocking capability.
One possible way to reduce the on-resistance of a power transistor having a given voltage blocking capability is to provide compensation regions in the drift region, wherein the compensation regions are doped complementary to the drift region. Another possible way is to provide field plates in the drift region which are dielectrically insulated from the drift region and which are, for example, connected to a gate or source terminal of the transistor. In these types of power transistors, the compensation zones or the field plates partly “compensate” doping charges in the drift region when the component is in its off-state. This allows to provide a higher doping of the drift region—which reduces the on-resistance—without reducing the voltage blocking capability.
A power diode (pin diode) usually includes a low doped drift or base region between a first emitter region of a first doping type and a second emitter region of a second doping type. A power diode is configured to block when a voltage with a first polarity (blocking voltage) is applied between the first and second emitter regions, and is configured to conduct a current when a voltage with a second polarity is applied between the first and second emitter regions. In the conducting state, however, a charge carrier plasma with charge carriers of the first and second type (p-type and n-type charge carriers) is generated in the base region. The amount of charge carrier plasma stored in the base region is dependent on a length of the base region and is, therefore, dependent on the voltage blocking capability, where the amount of charge carrier plasma increases when the voltage blocking capability increases. This charge carrier plasma has to be removed before the diode may block upon applying a blocking voltage.
These known devices, however, have a high output capacitance which may result in a time delay when the device changes the operation state from an on-state to an off-state and vice versa. There is, therefore a need to provide a power semiconductor device with a high voltage blocking capability, a low on-resistance and a low output capacitance.